The Context

On August 21, the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington, DC celebrated the first birthday of panda cub Xiao Qi Ji, which translates to Little Miracle. The zoo had held an online contest where the public could vote on a list of names. He “shared not one but two delicious fruitsicle cakes with his mother, Mei Xiang,” the zoo said on its website.  The cub’s birth definitely comes as a little...

Today we discuss how a ferocious, exotic beast, lion, has become an auspicious, cute cultural icon in ancient China. The lion originally came from Africa. It trekked from Egypt into Europe and Asia Minor from the Mediterranean, and into the Iranian Plateau and India. There was no human intervention in their migration. There are two sub-spices of Asian lions: Persian lions and Indian lions.  When t...

On August 30, China announced a policy that restricts the time minors can play online games to three hours a week. The new rules limit those under 18 access to online gaming platforms to one hour from 8 to 9pm on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, and on official holidays.  However, on Saturday 8pm that week, many complained they could not log on their accounts for Arena of Valor, a popular game by T...

If Wuhan was the place in China that received most attention in 2020, Henan Province has certainly captured its share of attention this year. Henan in history is repeatedly referred to as the “zhongyuan,” or “central plain.” It is the thousands of years of its history as the “zhongyuan” that has created and shaped the land as the symbol of the most glorious – and the most painful memories of China...

Even if we trace archaeology back to da Vinci and Raphael, there is another related discipline that began much earlier. Epigraphy, the study of ancient inscriptions, was first developed in ancient China. Unlike archaeology, it aimed to challenge and verify interpretations of classical Confucianism texts.  A movement similar to the Renaissance blossomed in China during the 9th and 11th century. Lea...

By August 2, at least 302 people had died and some 50 were registered as missing due to the catastrophic floods that swept through parts of central China’s Henan Province after days of torrential downpours in mid-July. By 7am on August 9, nearly 15 million people in Henan had been affected by the floods. In Europe, about 200 people died in the flood which hit Germany and Belgium also in mid-July....

At one time, archaeology was not a place for outsiders. But in recent years, it has captured the public imagination in China with movie blockbusters about tomb raiding like The Lost Tomb and the mysterious new findings of the Sanxingdui excavations. There is even a popular toy that lets children play archaeologist: a box containing a Terracotta warrior replica buried in dirt and tiny excavation to...

Humans in prehistory period relied on hunting and gathering to survive. When agriculture was developed, hunting became an important sport and entertainment for elites. It often carried military and political significance. 

 The construction of the Hangou canal began in 486 BCE, 1,090 years before Emperor Yang launched his canal project. It became the earliest part of what became the Sui Grand Canal. Its initiator was a ruler who was as ambitious and ill-fated as Emperor Yang.  Cities along the Grand Canal also were affected as the length and contour of the canal changed. At 1,800 kilometers long, the Yuan canal is a...

 “The same water either supports or overturns boats on it,”  Li Shimin, the second emperor of the Tang in the 7th century, often  cited these Confucius’ remarks which compared water to the people and boats to sovereigns.  He did this to repeatedly remind himself of the lessons he learned from the fall of the Sui. He founded a golden age in China's history.  The Grand Canal witnessed and even...

 Zhang Xifeng, a 17-year-old student at Hengshui High School of Hebei Province, went viral. In his speech on Anhui TV program Super Speaker, Zhang compared himself to a humble “country pig” and shared his ambition to “grab a city cabbage.” While he did not specify what “city cabbage” is, for a young man from a small town, the metaphor likely refers to a well-paid job and a wife from a middle-class...

There were 200 million skilled workers in China at the end of 2020, only 26 percent of the country’s total workforce.  Given this, vocational education has drawn unprecedented attention among policymakers in China, the world’s largest manufacturer. But parents, particularly those in urban areas, are against sending their children to vocational high schools or colleges. The problem is that blue col...

One day, more than 2,000 years ago, Emperor Yuan of China’s Western Han dynasty and his concubines were watching animal baiting. Suddenly a black bear jumped out of the enclosure and attacked the spectators. The emperor and his concubines were scared and ran away. But one of the concubines, Feng Yuan  did not. She stood right in front of the bear, while two guards tried to stop the bear with their...

A Chinese woman living in German-occupied Belgium in the 1940s finally succeeded in her mission: an audience with the top Nazi leader in Belgium, General Alexander von Falkenhausen. It was not the first time that Qian Xiuling had met the general, and she was counting on their prior connection to aid her. She told Falkenhausen that 96 people were being held hostage in the Belgian city of Écaussinne...

On May 31, China announced a further relaxation in its family planning policy, allowing couples to have up to three children. Supportive measures will be formulated to encourage couples to have more children. The announcement came right after the release of the seventh national population census which shows the population is aging and the birth rate is falling.   Ancient Chinese dynasties used dif...

In a recent TV series,  the two mothers even seem paranoid sometimes, while the two fathers  seem normal. This is because they are less involved in their children’s education.  There is an ancient Chinese saying that goes, “it’s a father’s fault if he just feeds but does not teach his children.”  So this raises the question: did fathers in ancient China take part in their children’s education?

In 2020, nearly 376 million Chinese people did not live in the cities where they had registered their household information, up by more than 154 million in the 2010 census. This sounds a bit odd when it’s compared to the Chinese tradition of emotionally being attached to one’s homeland where one is born and lives on the land that you farm.  In world history, flows of people, either in peaceful or...

In May, a herd of 15 wild Asian elephants continued their northern venture in  southwest China’s Yunnan Province after their year-long journey from their home in Xishuangbanna Yunnan.  Yunnan is th only area of China with wild Asian elephants. But for millennia, the habitat of wild Asian elephants stretched much farther north into China before human encroachment forced them south.  An example of h...

Six out of the top 10 most attractive tourist sites during the 5-day Labor Day holiday in China were historical sites. Three are in Beijing - the Great Wall, the Summer Palace and Yuanmingyuan, or Old Summer Palace. The other three are the Longmen Grottoes in the ancient city of Luoyang in central China, the Ming Dynasty city wall in Xi’an in China’s northwest and the Humble Administrator’s Garden...

On April 23, a wild male Siberian tiger appeared in a village in Heilongjiang Province in China’s northeast. It injured a local woman working on farmland and smashed the window of a passing car. It was later captured by police and forestry authorities. It will remain under a 45-day quarantine check-up before it is released back into the wild. Footage showing how it was captured went viral online....

Among about 2,000 artifacts and thousands of fragments of relics unearthed in the eight pits of the Sanxingdui Ruins site in Sichuan Province in China’s southwest, bronze masks and figurines have attracted the most attention. They are of unusual appearance, and have particularly protruding eyes. Do they resemble the ancient Shu people of this area, or perhaps people from West Asia or even further...

In Sanxingdui, it seems that the more artifacts were unearthed, the more questions were raised. Something invisible to the naked eye also caught attention. Silk proteins were found in one of the six newly discovered pits. Silk was probably originally only used in sacrificial rituals, not for clothing.  In addition, the life cycle of a silkworm starts with an egg and ends with a moth. For ancient C...

Ten nesting ivory balls make a big ball. On a fan, there are scenes of European courting couples. On another fan, Qing Dynasty officials are on the road with their entourage. There are porcelain tea sets with a Chinese floral design but with European-style gilt trim. All are delicate. All feature both Chinese and European tastes. These are some of the displays at a recent exhibition on Chinese exp...

Chinese parents invest a lot in English language education for their children. English is a major subject in China’s curriculum from primary schools to college. However,  Xu Jin （许进）, a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the top political advisory body, recently proposed to remove English from the national college entrance exam. One of his reasons is that compute...

Recently Intel removed an online commercial by Yang Li, a controversial stand-up comedian. “Why do some men look so ordinary but are so self-confident (to judge women at will)?” “These are some of things Yang Li said in her shows in the past two years. Many angry men accused her of “instigating a confrontation between men and women.” They called for a boycott against Intel products. But Yang Li’s...